Dopamine

Fiction

Mathai went to the kitchen and picked up a glass. The TV was screening a program called Ask the Doctor. “Dopamine is a sort of hormone that gives us a feeling of happiness or pleasure,” the doc said. “But the problem with it is that it makes us want more of the same thing. You feel happy with one drink and you obviously want more of it. More drink means more happiness…”

That’s when Mathai went to pick up his glass and the brandy bottle. It was only morning still. Annamma, his wife, had gone to school as usual to teach Gen Z, an intractable generation. Mathai had retired from a cooperative bank where he was manager in the last few years of his service. Now, as a retired man, he took to watching the TV. It will be more correct to say that he took to flicking channels. He wanted entertainment, but the films and serial programs failed to make sense to him, let alone entertain. The news channels were more entertaining. Our politicians are like the clowns in a circus, he thought as he watched them day in and day out.

Mathai was all alone at home until Annamma returned from work in the evening. Morpheus brandy kept him company. He was in love with the Greek god of dreams, Morpheus, just because there was a brandy in that name.

Mathai was aware of the illusory nature of dopamine even before the doctor on the TV reminded him of that. So his drinking was generally under control and Annamma didn’t mind it. After all, with both their children abroad, what was Mathai to do at home except have a drink and watch on the TV the circus called politics?

Morpheus was not an escapist means for Mathai. He was intelligent enough to know the difference between the maya of dopamine and the dreams of Morpheus. There was a little problem, however. He remembered his son and daughter more intensely after a drink of Morpheus. He would then need one or two more drinks to forget them.

Not that he didn’t like Peter and Rose. Far from that, he loved them more than they ever realised or they ever could.

Peter has been in Canada for many years now. He went there to pursue a career in IT, fell in love with a Sikh girl whose parents lived in Punjab, married her eventually, and forgot his parents thereafter.

“He calls us once in a while, doesn’t he?” Annamma asked Mathai when he groused about their son’s selective amnesia. Those calls were nothing more than perfunctory gestures, Mathai knew. Even they were becoming less frequent now.

Rose went to America to study something called Data Science and Analytics. She secured a job there too and is now dating a man from Yemen whose ancestry is half Arabic and half African. Why on earth couldn’t she find someone with proper parentage? Mathai wondered.

Rose explained her situation to Annamma.

Saleh had to run away form his motherland because of hunger and fear, Rose explained. Just imagine, mom, a man who didn’t have food to eat and water to drink, forget a home to belong to. Rose was moved to tears by Saleh’s story which he narrated like a suspense-filled horror thriller as he sat with Rose in the college’s cafeteria.

“Rose has a tender heart, you know,” Annamma let out a sigh as she consoled Mathai on the loss of both their children to alien cultures.

“No,” the doc was saying on the TV. She was answering a caller’s question. “Dopamine doesn’t love anyone. She’s more of a flirt. Gives you a wink, tantalises you, and vanishes when the real work begins. She can make you feel like a king for an hour or so, then leaves you with the dishes. She won’t be around when you’re down and out, lonely, and wondering why your phone hasn’t rung in a week.”

Ah, Mathai felt the pang in his heart. His phone never rings these days. It hasn’t rung for months now. Peter has his Punjabi girl and Rose has her Yemeni boy. Annamma has her students at school. Mathai has Morpheus, he chuckled.

“The problem with most alcoholics is not dopamine,” the doc went on. “The problem with them is they themselves. Learning to sit with you when dopamine is gone is the solution.”

That’s all fine, Mathai said to himself. I have no problem with myself. My problem lies in Canada and America intertwined with Punjab and Yemen. He took up Morpheus again. God of dreams, he said as he poured another drink.

When Annamma returned home in the afternoon, Mathai was lying on the floor of the dining room. Flinging her bag on the floor, she knelt down and shook her husband’s body.

Mathai was alright. He had just fallen asleep. Maybe, he had fallen unconscious before that. He wasn’t sure. But it didn’t matter.

Mathai refused to go to a doctor. “Dopamine ditched me, that’s all,” he said. “I will have to sit with me, that’s all.”

Annamma thought he was speaking under inebriation and left it at that. She knew it was no use forcing him to go to hospital. He trusted his body more than the medical science.

Annamma knew when to make a call to Canada and when to America without disturbing the daily routines of their son and daughter. She told them about Mathai’s fall in rather vague terms because Mathai had forbidden her from mentioning it to anyone.

Mathai was relieved that neither Peter nor Rose showed any concern. A drink more than usual, nothing more – that’s how they both took it.

Mathai called up Morpheus for dreams. He dreamt of how he became agitated whenever anything hurt his boy or girl back in those good ol’ days. As long as memories are like sweet dreams, there’s no sadness, Mathai said to himself. He was with himself now.